Going Back For Our Future

This book is the first volume of an attempt to capture and record some of the answers to these questions—either from the pioneers themselves or from those persons who worked most closely with them. We know there are many pioneers and early trailblazers who are not included in this volume, but there are other volumes to follow. As we have posed questions, rummaged through files and oft-neglected books, and probed the memories of many individuals, we have come to realize our list of true pioneers is ever growing. There are names on the list that most of us readily recognize, and there are names of whom few of us have heard—yet who were significant in their roles as mentors or idea development and teaching. We quickly discovered that the “family tree” showing connections between these people is not a neat, clean simple branching tree, but is more like spaghetti. The connections are many, are intertwined, and all have their significance. The stories in this volume demonstrate how vital this network was in supporting the individual pioneers during their journey in difficult times and continues to be for those of us today in our own enterprise.

"Who were the pioneers in science education, and what motivated them to do what they did?" This book is the second volume of an attempt to capture and record some of the answers to these questions—either from the pioneers themselves or from those persons who worked most closely with them. As with the first volume, we have attempted to include as many pioneers as possible, but we know that there are still many that are not included in this or the previous volume. As we have posed questions, rummaged through files and oft?neglected books, and probed the memories of many individuals, we have come to realize our list of true pioneers is ever growing. As we consider our list of pioneers, we know that there are names on the list that most of us readily recognize. We also fully realize that there are names of whom few of us have heard—yet who were significant in their roles as mentors or idea development and teaching. We continue to be impressed with our science education “family tree” ever branching out to more individuals and connections. The stories in this volume continue to demonstrate how vital this network was in supporting the individual pioneers during their journey in difficult times and continues to be for those of us today in our own enterprise.

Wall Street scandals. Fights over taxes. Racial resentments. A Lakers-Celtics championship. The Karate Kid topping the box-office charts. Bon Jovi touring the country. These words could describe our current moment—or the vaunted iconography of three decades past. In this wide-ranging and wickedly entertaining book, New York Times bestselling journalist David Sirota takes readers on a rollicking DeLorean ride back in time to reveal how so many of our present-day conflicts are rooted in the larger-than-life pop culture of the 1980s—from the “Greed is good” ethos of Gordon Gekko (and Bernie Madoff) to the “Make my day” foreign policy of Ronald Reagan (and George W. Bush) to the “transcendence” of Cliff Huxtable (and Barack Obama). Today’s mindless militarism and hypernarcissism, Sirota argues, first became the norm when an ’80s generation weaned on Rambo one-liners and “Just Do It” exhortations embraced a new religion—with comic books, cartoons, sneaker commercials, videogames, and even children’s toys serving as the key instruments of cultural indoctrination. Meanwhile, in productions such as Back to the Future, Family Ties, and The Big Chill, a campaign was launched to reimagine the 1950s as America’s lost golden age and vilify the 1960s as the source of all our troubles. That 1980s revisionism, Sirota shows, still rages today, with Barack Obama cast as the 60s hippie being assailed by Alex P. Keaton–esque Republicans who long for a return to Eisenhower-era conservatism. “The past is never dead,” William Faulkner wrote. “It’s not even past.” The 1980s—even more so. With the native dexterity only a child of the Atari Age could possess, David Sirota twists and turns this multicolored Rubik’s Cube of a decade, exposing it as a warning for our own troubled present—and possible future.

In a comprehensive and theoretically novel analysis, Take Back Our Future unveils the causes, processes, and implications of the 2014 seventy-nine-day occupation movement in Hong Kong known as the Umbrella Movement. The essays presented here by a team of experts with deep local knowledge ask: how and why had a world financial center known for its free-wheeling capitalism transformed into a hotbed of mass defiance and civic disobedience? Take Back Our Future argues that the Umbrella Movement was a response to China's internal colonization strategies—political disenfranchisement, economic subsumption, and identity reengineering—in post-handover Hong Kong. The contributors outline how this historic and transformative movement formulated new cultural categories and narratives, fueled the formation and expansion of civil society organizations and networks both for and against the regime, and spurred the regime's turn to repression and structural closure of dissent. Although the Umbrella Movement was fraught with internal tensions, Take Back Our Future demonstrates that the movement politicized a whole generation of people who had no prior experience in politics, fashioned new subjects and identities, and awakened popular consciousness.

This thought-provoking collection not only takes us into the past and the future, but also explores what might happen if we attempt to manipulate time to our own advantage. These stories show what happen once you start to meddle with time and the paradoxes that might arise. It also raises questions about whether we understand time, and how we perceive it. Once we move outside the present day, can we ever return or do we move into an alternate world? What happens if our meddling with Nature leads to time flowing backwards, or slowing down or stopping all together? Or if we get trapped in a constant loop from which we can never escape. Is the past and future immutable or will we ever be able to escape the inevitable? These are just some of the questions that are raised in these challenging, exciting and sometimes amusing stories by Kage Baker, Simon Clark, Fritz Leiber, Christopher Priest, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Robert Silverberg, Michael Swanwick, John Varley and many others.

If you knew, come tomorrow, you would have no memory, what would you choose to do with today? We’re never allowed to pick and choose what memories we get to keep. Every single memory that has been graphed in your brain can be taken in a single instant. An injury or a surgery, gone right or wrong, can take away aspects of your life, even your personality. You’d never know it. The only choice for countering your memory loss would be relying on the people around you. You’d hear, second-hand, about the person you were and what you loved most. Relying only on others' memories of you, how would you want to be remembered? Kiyomi Holland is a young mother and wife who, after being diagnosed with a brain tumor, has taken up the pen to share her experience and fleeting thoughts. This heartfelt and at times humorous journey is her attempt to capture who she is in this moment as she comes to face her diagnosis, treatment, and beyond. Join her as she shares intimate revelations about life, love, and family. HeARTwork reminds us of the fragility of life and how very precious our memories are and encourages everyone to see their happiness, find the beauty in life, and remember the wealth that surrounds them. Pieced together in a combination of interviews as well as writings before and after surgery, this story allows you to walk hand-in-hand with Kiyomi’s thoughts and emotions. This revealing experience may inspire you to take a moment and self-reflect on your own life, love, and family--if today all your yesterdays were forgotten.

We find our way forward by going back. The invented history of the Western world is crumbling fast, Anishinaabe writer Patty Krawec says, but we can still honor the bonds between us. Settlers dominated and divided, but Indigenous peoples won't just send them all "home." Weaving her own story with the story of her ancestors and with the broader themes of creation, replacement, and disappearance, Krawec helps readers see settler colonialism through the eyes of an Indigenous writer. Settler colonialism tried to force us into one particular way of living, but the old ways of kinship can help us imagine a different future. Krawec asks, What would it look like to remember that we are all related? How might we become better relatives to the land, to one another, and to Indigenous movements for solidarity? Braiding together historical, scientific, and cultural analysis, Indigenous ways of knowing, and the vivid threads of communal memory, Krawec crafts a stunning, forceful call to "unforget" our history. This remarkable sojourn through Native and settler history, myth, identity, and spirituality helps us retrace our steps and pick up what was lost along the way: chances to honor rather than violate treaties, to see the land as a relative rather than a resource, and to unravel the history we have been taught.

How the issues of the past affect the future of Deep Church--a concept conceived by C. S. Lewis.Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant traditions drink from the well of a common tradition rooted in the early church. Many Evangelicals are now reengaging with the practice of the early church as they seek to live as disciples today. Remembering the past is essential for facing the future. In Remembering Our Future leaders and theologians reflect on a range of issues for which a vibrant contemporary faith requires a careful listening to the past. What is the place of tradition in the church's life? How should we interpret the Bible? How should we worship? What, in other words, might Deep Church look like?